Author: LGBTQFaithUK

We believe and affirm gender and sexual minorities in their chosen faith.
This site is a resource for those people of faith who are gender or sexual minorities and their allies. It is a place to find information about different faiths and some of the relevant issues. There is also news of upcoming events and book reviews.
This site is affirming of people of faith outside of the cis gender and heterosexual majority. All are children of God and deserve respect and affirmation.

‘The arrogance of certainty’ is a quote from Megan Phelps-Roper’s book Unfollow. She is the granddaughter of Fred Phelps, the founder of Westboro Baptist Church, from which she ‘escaped’ in 2012 and she has a great deal to say about religious groups like Westboro and their views and in particular how to counter them.

She writes with a searing honesty that I could never come close to matching. But it is that deep honesty that allows us to see the thought processes and the journey she makes to leave the group. That has lessons for us all.

Growing up at Westboro she was taught that the major sin was doubt. Doubt of the church leaders or elders was equal to doubt of the word of God, so all doubt had to be suppressed and eliminated in favour of ‘obedience, obedience, obedience’. It was this suppression of the ability to question what they were being taught and told to do that allowed for the suppression of empathy and even the celebration of suffering of those outside the church. It shows how intelligent and well-educated people can be sincere but misguided.

Westboro used the 1611 version of the King James Bible for all the quotes that members were expected to memorise. This emphasis on learning quotes allowed for a distorted understanding of doctrine and its application. They could justify their actions and beliefs by quoting scripture, what would be seen as proof texting to those outside the church. The existence of alternative interpretations of scripture or scriptures that gave another narrative were just not tolerated.

Into this environment, we see the points where her views start to break down. When some JAG officers launched a court case (Snyder v Phelps, a case on freedom of speech which one of her aunts argued before the US supreme Court and won) against them after a protest at a military funeral, the response was to find out the names of the JAG officers and pray for ‘the Lord to kill the father of the Marine and his accomplices’. Only later was she able to put this in context of Jesus’s command to ‘love your enemy’ and to pray for blessings on your enemy. For further information on this case, see here.

Another turning point came over ‘virtual picketing’. She ran a successful twitter account so when she was told by one of the church elders to retweet a tweet from him showing a photoshopped picture of members of Westboro in London protesting a royal wedding she saw it as stepping over a line. It went from posts that were ‘technically true’ but may be understood in a way that was not true, to something outrightly untrue.

Even when she had left Westboro and been cut off from her family, she still tried to engage with members of Westboro where she could. She tried the techniques that had worked with her. These mean: do not attack their doctrines, that is what they expect you to do and they will block out what you are saying. Instead show the internal inconsistencies and hypocrisy of what they are doing. It means pointing out where they are not living up to what they say they believe as a way to open up the dogma.

I wish I had read this before I had my latest encounter with christian demonstrators. It is that lesson about holding people to their own rules and stated beliefs that is central to deradicalisation here. We cannot allow the narrative that others are faithful to scripture and church teaching but we are not, as it allows others to take the moral high ground that I believe is ours. If they are not abiding by their own rules, then they have no right to expect us to abide by them.

It takes those who have been on a journey out of radicalism to show the path for others to follow. Her journey is an important lesson for us all, of what can happen when we suppress our own intellect and allow others to do our thinking for us. So, read Unfollow for yourself and see what lessons you learn from her experiences. Don’t just take my word for it.

Following the recent release of the pastoral guidance on civil partnerships,
(available here ) it is helpful to look at why this particular document has provoked so much anger and why that anger is not going away.

The church of England has long had a problem with ‘the gays’, it goes back decades. It has been going on for long enough that academics have been able to study the phenomenon, both those academics who are LGBTI+ and Christian and those who are not LGBTI+ or Christian.

The model that has proved most useful in studying the issues is the work of French philosopher Rene Girard and his ideas about violence and the sacred and particularly his ideas about the scapegoat.

The idea of the scapegoat first appears in the book of Leviticus, chapter 16, where the people of God put their sins onto the goat and send it out into the desert, purging the people of their guilt. Girard has written about Jesus as the scapegoat, bearing the sins of humanity.

Girard’s ideas go further than that. Societies and groups can create scapegoats who are blamed for the sins and failures of the group or society. The group’s fears may be projected onto them or they may be seen to be the source of unrest or degeneracy which the group must expel. The scapegoat is othered. ‘They’ must pay the price for ‘Us’. Often the scapegoat is expelled or even killed, but if the scapegoat will not go or cannot be killed then the scapegoat is persecuted or abused. This persecution or abuse is seen as perfectly reasonable to the majority of the society or group because it is happening to an outsider who is somehow ‘less’ than the insiders.

It is in this context that the current crisis should be understood. When the House of Bishops produced their 2005 guidance on same-sex civil partnerships or in 2014, when they produced the Valentine’s day statement on same-sex marriage, it was the scapegoat, the ‘other’ who was being told that their relationships were second rate or not what God intended and that the church regarded them as mere friendships, which had to be permanently abstinent.

What has happened now is that mixed sex couples are being told that their relationships are second rate and must be celibate. In doing this the church has gone beyond insulting the scapegoat, it has insulted those who see themselves as ‘us’. People who have always been nurtured and affirmed by the church are suddenly being told that their relationships are outside God’s will and must be celibate, their sense of insult and betrayal is huge. In doing this the church has insulted not only those in mixed sex civil partnerships, but those who are in childless marriages, those who are cohabiting or who cohabited before marriage or those who are divorced or divorced and remarried.

When you expect the church to affirm you then you do not have the coping mechanisms of those who are frequently abused by the church.

This brings to the fore the values disconnect between the powers that be in the church and the young people of our society. We saw at the recent meeting of the Church of England’s General Synod that on the matter of climate change there was a coming together of the church leadership and young people on a matter of importance to all. Preserving our climate is about shared values. However that sharing of values does not extend of matters of sexuality and gender where younger generations are far more understanding and inclusive than the church leaders. The fact that archbishop Justin was apologising for institutional racism in the church showed that values disconnect very clearly. Young people see a church that is racist, sexist and homophobic and do not like what they see. They see meaningless apologies and are looking to see repentance from the church and remedial action. When the church follows up its apologies with real change and inclusion then people will be more willing to join. This is a generation brought up in families that may have a step parent, parents who were divorced and remarried, whose parents may be co-habiting or the same sex or foster parents and who may be married or civil partnered or have no legal relationship. They are just family and the church has insulted them too. It has othered a lot of people.

It was interesting to follow the signatures on the open letter of protest to the archbishops. Available to read here. It may have started with many signatures from LGBTI+ people who did not like their relationships being debased yet again, but it very quickly went straight on the second day. It showed that the church cannot insult its core members like this. They are the PCC members, the church wardens, the parish clergy, the flower arrangers etc. They are not the scapegoat.

There are several ways out of this crisis, the only questions are what will be the price and who will pay it? The apology from the archbishops (available here) was vague and there is real speculation about what the archbishops were actually apologising for. Actions speak louder than words and the actions were that the college of bishops decided not to withdraw the statement. That fatally undermines the Living in Love and Faith project. The bishops cannot lead unless people will follow and they have upset too many people for that to be viable.

On January 22nd 2020 the house of Bishops (HOB) published their pastoral statement Civil Partnerships – for same sex and opposite sex and opposite sex couples. A pastoral statement from the House of Bishops of the Church of England. This is available to download here.

In this document the HOB gave their decisions that opposite sex civil partnerships cannot be blessed in church and that anyone who applies for ordination in a civil partnership must be asked to explain why they have rejected the church’s doctrine of marriage. While I acknowledge the right of the HOB to make these decisions, the quality of the document setting out their reasoning is deeply flawed. It has factual errors, erroneous assumptions and significant omissions. It also produces a new definition of marriage!

In 2005 the House of Bishops issued a previous pastoral statement about civil partnerships. Available to download here.

It is interesting to compare the two documents because some sections of the two statements are copy and paste. I will discuss some of the content of this new statement.

Paragraph 3 incorrectly states that ‘…for the first time, [there is] a substantive gap emerged between the Church’s understanding of marriage and that of the State.’ In fact it is merely the latest in a list of differences in understanding. It has to be said that this difference in understanding incudes a difference in opinion about who controls marriage.

The church’s Canon B30 says: ‘The Church of England affirms, according to our Lord’s teaching, that marriage is in its nature a union permanent and lifelong, for better for worse, till death them do part, of one man with one woman, to the exclusion of all others on either side, for the procreation and nurture of children, for the hallowing and right direction of the natural instincts and affections, and for the mutual society, help and comfort which the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.”

Yet the state has allowed and regulated divorce since the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act. The church of England stopped opposing this in 2002. It seems to me that a disagreement lasting 145 years and abandoning a key element of canon B30 would count as a substantive gap between church and state. And let’s not forget the 1836 Civil Marriage Act which allowed Catholics and non-conformists to marry in their own churches. Marriage could also take place in a civil registry office. This separated marriage from the exclusive remit of the churches.

In paragraph 7 the HOB redefines marriage, contrary to the official church Canons. The new HOB definition is
‘Marriage, defined as a faithful, committed, permanent and legally sanctioned relationship between a man and a woman making a public commitment to each other, is central to the stability and health of human society.’

The words making a public commitment to each other, have been added into the statement from paragraph 2 in the 2005 statement. This additional words are not found in any of the authoritative texts about marriage. These texts are usefully summarised here. Why does the HOB feel that they need to introduce a new element to their definition of marriage?

All definitions of marriage contain an explicit statement that marriage is permanent – no divorce is possible and remarriage after divorce has to be contrary to the requirement that it is lifelong. Yet the church routinely allows this in church.

Paragraphs 8 and 9 are copied, but in the intervening 15 years the church has made no attempt to define ‘sexual intercourse’ nor the sexual relationships that we should not be having neither has it addressed the vastly greater number of heterosexuals who are having sexual relationships outside marriage. If the church truly believed in this teaching then it would not ignore the significant number of couples who come to the church to get married and already have children together. How many of those couples get told that their relationship falls short of God’s purposes for human beings?

Paragraph 10 contains ‘In the context, however, of the introduction of opposite sex as well as same sex civil partnerships, the teaching of the church on marriage remains unchanged.’ This is almost an oxymoron, because the HOB both argues that marriage and civil partnerships are different things and argues that the theology of marriage applies to civil partnerships too. If Civil partnerships are different, then they should do the theology for them and do not just import ideas about marriage.

Why does the copied paragraph 14 (2005 para 11) have ‘nature’ underlined? It was not underlined in 2005. I also note the repeated use of the word legislation, it reads like something written by lawyers rather than theologians.

Then paragraph 16 has ‘The principles … therefore apply also to opposite sex civil partnerships.’ The wording implies that this is a conclusion drawn from an argument. However the preceding paragraphs have just basically said that people enter into civil partnerships for a variety of reasons and some of them may intend for the relationship to be sexually active. Everything in the preceding four paragraphs could apply equally well to opposite sex marriages, but nobody is suggesting that the principles for civil partnership should apply to them. As the reasoning applies to all, the principles from those should apply to all.

So we move to the heart of the matter in paragraphs 19 – 21, which basically say that because some people entering a civil partnership might not abide by the church’s teaching ‘that marriage between a man and a woman is the proper context for sexual intercourse’, then everyone entering a civil partnership is to be denied the opportunity for a blessing service. No attempt is made to allow for individual circumstances, some might agree with that teaching, so why should they be denied blessing?

In light of recent safeguarding events, such as the recent BBC2 documentary on the abuse by Bishop Peter Ball and the episcopal cover up, how can the HOB really say to couples entering a civil partnership that the clergy should talk to them about ‘sexual morality, celibacy, and the positive value of committed friendships in the Christian tradition?’ I’m afraid that the HOB has lost a lot of credibility recently and this unpastoral statement will just have accelerated that loss of credibility. Statements like this, from people in opposite sex marriages who deny to others the blessings that they enjoy, do not have the right to take the moral high ground until they deal with their own moral failings.

More copy and paste, then we get to new material in paragraph 26. It says ‘the arguments advanced in the Supreme Court included the desire for a publicly authorised institution which explicitly rejected the perceived religious connotations of marriage.’ Yet the HOB makes no attempt to understand the meaning of ‘religious connotations’ and miss the explicitly stated objections to patriarchy, privilege and power. When the successful campaigners Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan had their civil partnership on the first day, Tuesday December 31st 2019, the media reported that they had vows (The Times Wednesday January 1 2020 page 11). It also reported their reasons for choosing civil partnerships rather than marriage, which were based on equality and mutual respect as well as loving each other.

Therefore it is ironic that the HOB are wanting ‘candidates for ordination wishing to enter an Opposite Sex Civil Partnership should expect to be asked to explain their understanding of the theological and social meanings of their decision.’ Perhaps the candidate for ordination should enquire about the theological and social understanding of the person doing the enquiring. Or just explain it to the bishops anyway.

Comparing paragraph 29 with paragraph 23 in the 2005 statement, there is material that has been removed. The removed material states Issues in Human Sexuality made it clear that, while the same standards apply to all, the Church did not want to exclude from its fellowship those lay people of gay or lesbian orientation who, in conscience, were unable to accept that a life of sexual abstinence was required of them and instead chose to enter into a faithful, committed relationship. I would like to see this material reinserted into the document. This is an important point and needs to be explicitly stated.

Paragraph 32 states that ‘A key difference between a marriage and a civil partnership is that marriages are solemnised with vows and civil partnerships are not. Converting a marriage into a civil partnership thus implies the repudiation of a couple’s marriage vows.’ Speaking for myself, every civil partnership ceremony that I have been to has included vows. Everyone I know in a civil partnership had vows. Vows may not be mandatory and may not have legal weight, but couples want to make them. This is an argument that has no basis in pastoral practice. It can hardly count as a key difference. It sounds like someone is reading legislation and making assumptions, without checking the facts.

The idea that converting marriage into a civil partnership would imply repudiating the couple’s marriage vows is just contrary to the evidence. It might repudiate outdated patriarchy and male headship theology but it can be a way to affirm the marriage vows in equality and a loving relationship. The next paragraph compounds the pastoral insensitivity by requiring that if anyone wants to convert their marriage to a civil partnership ‘the implication that they are repudiating their marriage vows should be carefully pointed out to them.’ It would be interesting to know if the bishops ever considered that someone might disagree with them and feel that they were not repudiating their marriage vows.

However the real discrimination waits for the penultimate paragraph, 34. ‘In the case of clergy or ordinands who seek to convert a marriage into a civil partnership, it should be made clear to them that their decision involves the repudiation of their marriage vows and that the same discipline will apply to them as to those who have broken their marriage vows in other circumstances.’ Essentially because the HOB has got this unfounded idea that converting a marriage to a civil partnership is repudiating the marriage vows, they feel they can discipline those who do it. This shows a complete lack of understanding that there may be any point of view other than theirs. How can they speak to the motivation of everyone who might do this in the future? The truth is that they can’t. They are threatening to use their power against anyone who does not agree with their interpretations.

I would like to suggest an alternative scenario – where the HOB actually have a conversation (no more passive listening) and actually find out for themselves why some people prefer civil partnership over marriage. Some people want to make and keep vows, but do not want to be weighed down with centuries of outdated patriarchal headship theology.

And so this train wreck of a document ends with the new definition of marriage. ‘For Christians, marriage – that is the lifelong union between a man and a woman, contracted with the making of vows – remains the proper context for sexual activity.’ Somehow lifelong union seems to be restated and ignored and the idea that contracting with the making of vows makes the union a marriage.

‘In its approach to civil partnerships the Church seeks to uphold that standard, to affirm the value of committed, sexually abstinent friendships and to minister sensitively and pastorally to those Christians who conscientiously decide to order their lives differently.’

There is no sensitivity here, no quality pastoral care, just a restatement of privilege and power. Sorry Bishops, you have embarrassed yourselves here. If you want to decide that opposite sex civil partnerships cannot be blessed and that potential ordinands should explain their reasons for choosing civil partnerships, then you have the right to make that decision. Just make it a very short announcement, 2 sentences should do, and don’t try to redefine marriage while you are at it.

Sadly this is another church document that does not mention Jesus at all. It does mention the creation and that seems to be more important to HOB than Jesus.

For further reading ‘The changing nature of marriage’ page can be accessed here.
Anyone who wishes to contact their bishop can find publicly available contact information here.

In September 2016 The Guardian newspaper carried an article about the bishop of Grantham, Nicholas Chamberlain, in which he came out as a partnered gay man. This made bishop Nicholas the only openly gay bishop in the Church of England.
The original article can be read here

Following that coming out, bishop Nicholas received hundreds of letters. Two academics were asked to study these unique letters from a sociological perspective.
As a way of reporting these letters, a blog post was created in December 2019. This can be read here. The full academic article is available for download here.

As part of the academic reporting of their work the authors announced a seminar to talk about their findings. All the tickets were quickly booked over the first weekend. Demand was so great that the seminar had to be moved to a larger venue and more tickets made available. That seminar took place on Thursday January 2020 at Goldsmith’s college.

As several of the academic findings are available in the links above, I will focus on the other things that came out of this seminar. One idea that I had not come across before was the idea of ‘vicarious religion’. This is the idea that there are people who do not ‘do religion’ themselves, but feel it is important that religion is being done by others. Vicarious religion happens when the religion is practised by an active minority on behalf of a larger part of society. This idea showed up significantly in the letters, there were many who expressed the idea that ‘although I don’t go to church myself…’ or ‘I’m not a Christian but…’ and yet they felt strongly enough about this matter to write to a bishop that they had never met. As these writers were out of the usual church circles, even finding an address or an email to send a letter would have taken some effort. Clearly this was something that mattered far beyond the confines of church.

The researchers noted that there were some absent voices from the correspondence. There were no letters from bible believing / evangelical churches stating how they see their position. Nor were there voices from people who were still developing their ideas on this matter.

The overwhelming number of letters were supportive, with only 4% being negative. The negative letters were ones that the researchers found difficult to deal with emotionally because of the tone and nature of the content. These letters expressed a limited number of theological citations, such as Leviticus, Ezekiel or Romans as well as a theology that the bible was the highest authority. The majority of the non-supportive letters were not civil.

The relationship between church and society is complex. Societies evolve (they always have and always will) and churches variously resist that evolution, so there is a tension and ‘solutions’ to that tension emerge slowly. The church is both in the world and not of it, which can make those in the church feel that they have to be ‘guardians of the sacred’ in a changing society. Yet the church is also called to live it’s ministry in society. This tension will always be there and there will always be presenting problems where the sacred and the social meet. At the moment the presenting problem in the UK church is the inclusion of LGBT+ Christians.

The Church of England is pre-occupied with its own decline. There are well established and well organised groups within the Church of England advocating different positions and this leads to polarisation of the debate.

The role of bishops was discussed and the idea that bishops are a ‘focus for unity’ was seen as a problem for those who do not hold a privileged position. Those who are white, heterosexual and male are often seem to be in a privileged and neutral position who can ‘hold it all together’. Those who are women or LGBT clergy are less likely to be seen as being able to hold it together in the same way. This kind of contested status has always been there, for example in the Elizabethan period the contested status was married clergy. The larger question is ‘what is the essence of episcopacy’ and then we can ask if we can see this in LGBT people.

The Q and A at the end provided some interesting points. One of these was about secrecy. Someone from the Lincoln diocese stated that bishop Nicholas’ sexuality was an open secret in the diocese and everybody knew already. So when it went public, it didn’t change anything. Nobody was surprised, his ministry wasn’t affected, relationships didn’t change, but this might not have been the case if it had not been an open secret. Secrecy is a problem.

The presenting issues change, but the underlying problems do not because it always comes down to the question of what it means to be human. Whether it is a question of left handedness or whether women can vote or the full humanity of different ethnicities. We can never resolve the underlying questions so we will always have sticking points that we have to resolve. At a meeting of representatives of Lincoln diocese with some members of their partner dioceses the presenting issues were different but the underlying questions were the same. Lincoln diocese was debating LGBT matters, the diocese of Bruge was debating whether to allow those who had remarried after divorce to receive communion and the diocese in Sweden was debating about funerals. In a country where churches are funded by a church tax paid by members, should the church still offer funerals to families where few or only one member of the family pays the church tax?

As the tension between accommodation or resistance to societal change by the church is one that can never be resolved, the presenting issues and the factors affecting them may change but there will always be tension between society and the church. These letters provided a unique and fascinating glimpse into this interaction